Slaughterhouse
by Riona
Summary: A mission goes wrong for Evie and Jacob.


They've cleared the area of Blighters, and now only the Slaughterhouse siblings themselves remain. Jacob looks out of the window at their targets, while Evie goes through the pockets of the man she's just killed. It's a little claustrophobic, just the two of them and the corpse in this tiny room, but she can't exactly say she's unused to it.

A key, perhaps to the room they're in; they'll be departing through the window, most likely, so it's no use to them. A few pounds, which she pockets. Two bullets. And...

"Jacob," she hisses.

"Evie, my love?"

"Be serious," she says. She holds up her find. "What do you think of this?"

Jacob crouches down beside her and makes a great show of examining it.

"In my expert opinion," he says eventually, "that, Evie, is a dart."

She gives him a shove. "Doesn't it remind you of anything?"

"Well, yes. It looks like a dart. Which was instrumental in my identifying it as a dart, in fact."

"Doesn't it remind you of the darts Mr Bell makes for us?"

Jacob's expression turns serious. "You think Aleck's been making weapons for the other side?"

"I don't know," Evie says, turning it over in her hands. Mr Bell has always seemed genuine to her. And the Blighter is carrying a blowpipe, so they evidently don't have the same launching technology. "It's possible they just looked at our darts and worked out how to develop them themselves. Or perhaps this is something completely different, and I'm worrying over nothing."

"Which has clearly never happened before," Jacob says, taking the dart from her. "Well, there's one way to find out: stick the baddies with it and see if they turn on each other." He glances back at the window. "Let's make Charlie over there kill her brother, shall we?"

Evie snatches the dart back. "Don't you _dare_ , Jacob Frye. That's horrific."

"I was joking," Jacob says, laughing. "I'm a killer; I'm not a _monster_. The traditional way, then?" He offers her his arm, as if inviting her for a stroll along the promenade.

Evie blinks. Frowns.

"Evie? I'll leave you behind if you don't wake up."

Somehow his words are hard to focus on. She looks down at the dart.

The dart with its needle halfway into her palm.

She pulls it out and throws it across the room.

"Jacob," she says, before she knows why she's saying it, before her mind can catch up with what's happened, "go."

Jacob frowns. "Ev—"

"Jacob, _leave!_ " And she tries to push him away, but somehow—

 _Miss Frye!_

—somehow she hurls herself at him instead, and—

 _Miss Frye!_

—she's screaming and screaming and screaming, slashing at every part of his face she can reach, and—

"Miss Frye, you're here. You're safe. You're with me."

Evie looks up with a gasp of breath. "Henry?"

Too forward, she realises instantly; she doesn't think she's ever called him by his first name to his face before. But he doesn't react to it; he's looking at her with concern, half-crouched in front of her, his hand on her shoulder.

"Miss Frye," he says, very gently. "What do you remember?"

"I had a dream," she says, after a moment. She almost laughs in relief, realising that's what it was. "Don't tell Jacob I was so shaken; I'll never hear the end of it."

It was so vivid. But she's on the train, she's safe, and Jacob will be in the next carriage, lounging on his sofa...

On this sofa, she realises, with a sudden lurch. She's sitting on Jacob's sofa, and Jacob is nowhere to be seen.

"Is Jacob out on a mission?" she asks, trying to sound casual. She has to keep her voice steady, it was a _dream_ , she's being ridiculous...

Henry draws breath, and then... nothing. He doesn't speak. His hand tightens on her shoulder.

"Henry," Evie says, a quiet, numb horror stealing over every part of her, "did I kill my brother?"

"No," Henry says at once. "Jacob is alive."

And it should be a relief, and in some part of her heart it is, but he gave the question a serious answer. He wasn't surprised or confused by it.

It was real. Everything she remembers, it's real. She looks down and there's blood on her gauntlet and some of it must be Jacob's.

"How badly did I hurt him?" she asks.

There are dark stains on her cloak, on the fabric of the sofa, on the carriage floor. Did he carry her here, both of them covered in his blood?

"He is in Miss Nightingale's care," Henry says. "He could not be in better hands. And the wounds were not life-threatening."

It seems hard to believe. More and more is coming back to her, however hard she tries to keep it at bay; the viciousness of her attack, the sheer need to murder that overcame her. And Jacob...

"He didn't fight back," Evie says. Her voice seems distant in her own ears.

"Because he cares about you," Henry says, softly.

"If he really cared, he'd have fought," Evie says. It's an unfair anger, she knows, but she has to hold on to it, because anything is better than the guilt that's eating her alive. "He'd have killed me before I could kill him. He wouldn't have risked letting me live with the knowledge that I'd..."

And suddenly she's sobbing, ashamed of herself for breaking down in front of Henry, ashamed of herself for everything.

Henry's hand is warm and steadying on her wrist, and she's grateful for it, and yet it changes nothing.

"Let us go and see your brother, Miss Frye," he says.

* * *

The left side of Jacob's face is a mess of bandages, covering his eye and his ear. Or... where his ear used to be. Evie's steps had been faltering even before she entered the hospital, and now they come to a halt. There isn't space for the shell of an ear under those bandages, and now it's coming back to her again in flashes...

"Evie!" Jacob says, grinning at her. As if she's just a normal visitor, as if she's not the one who put him in hospital, as if she doesn't have that memory of _hacking_ at him...

 _Are you all right?_ she wants to say. She can't speak. She knows the answer already; he's lost his ear, maybe his eye. He's far from all right, and it's because of her.

He hadn't fought back; he'd never gone for his blades. But he'd tried to get his arms around her, hold her in place.

He should have _left_.

"Why didn't you escape?" she asks.

"Well, the door was locked."

She hadn't told him about the key on the Blighter. Just another failure on her part. "Why didn't you escape through the window?"

He looks surprised she'd have to ask. "Because I was afraid you'd throw yourself out after me. You certainly weren't operating with your usual level of unnecessary caution."

"I should have been more careful with the dart," she says. Her throat is tight. "And I – I told you to _go!_ "

Jacob flashes her another smile. "When have I ever listened to what you told me, my dear sister?"

She can't do this. She can't be here. She almost killed him; she...

She was going to bring flowers. Something that symbolised regret. But nothing seemed adequate.

"I'm sorry," she says, and she turns, and she leaves.

"Evie!" Jacob calls after her, and she walks faster.

* * *

"Miss Frye?"

Evie looks up from her desk and tries to smile. She's barely slept in a week. "Mr Green."

"Jacob has left the hospital," Henry says, his smile warm and unfeigned. "He will join us at Waterloo. I'm sure he would like to see you."

Evie stares at him for a moment, her mind working fast. Or perhaps 'working' is the wrong word, too controlled. She feels that her mind is speeding downhill without her.

"Thank you, Mr Green," she says. "Please give him my regrets and tell him that I will not be able to see him today. I have work to do, and I'll need to concentrate."

Henry's smile falters. "Miss Frye..."

"Thank you," she says again, firmly. She steers him out of her carriage, shuts the door and bolts it.

When they've passed through Waterloo, she sits and studies her notes on the Piece of Eden, her hands over her ears to block out Jacob calling her name. At one point she feels a strange vibration, takes away her hands to hear shoes on the carriage roof, and she quickly draws the curtains over her windows before he can look in at her.

* * *

In the early hours of the morning, Evie takes the darts Mr Bell developed, all of them, and she digs a hole in Green Park, and she buries them as deeply as she can. When they're completely covered up, she almost feels that she can breathe again.

"Shall I say a few words?"

Evie goes tense in an instant. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

 _Don't startle me,_ she means. Because there was a second there when she almost went for her throwing knives, and she can't ever risk hurting Jacob again.

"You see, you may be the better Assassin, but I still know how to tail," Jacob says, coming up beside her.

He's wearing an eyepatch, she realises, before she registers his choice of headgear: a deerstalker with the earflaps down. She tries not to look too long, in case she catches sight of what's beneath them. She can't avoid seeing the deep cuts all over the left side of his face. They're cleaned, they're no longer bleeding, but stitches are still holding his skin together. They'll never heal completely. Every time she looks at him, she'll see the scars of her mistake.

"Who called me the better Assassin?" she asks, more to distract herself than anything else.

"I did," Jacob says. "Just now. Why won't you see me?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Jacob folds his arms. "I don't much like saying this, but I'm the only one of us who can get away with playing the fool. I want to know you're all right."

Evie stares at him. She can feel every cut in his face across her chest. "You want to know _I'm_...?"

"It's not easy when you shut yourself away. You have to leave your door open so I can check on you and laugh at your flower collection."

Evie takes a deep, unsteady breath.

"Will you just... be angry with me?" she asks. "Please? I _mutilated_ you; I don't deserve..." She gestures, helplessly, because she can't put all she doesn't deserve into words.

"It wasn't you doing it," Jacob says. "You know that. How many times have we seen those darts used?"

"I should have been able to fight it," Evie says. "Because it was you."

Jacob actually laughs. "Evie, I don't think that's how it works."

"I could have killed you."

"You didn't," he says. "I'm here. I'm alive."

And in a moment he's holding her, and she can't stop shaking.

"You'll be okay," he says, stroking her hair. Which is ridiculous, because she's not the one who's had the side of her face laid open. "You'll be fine, Evie Frye."

He's alive. She presses her face into his shoulder, and she can almost believe it.

" _We'll_ be fine," he says. "Both of us. You could take the other ear and I'd still love you."

She shudders, drawing away from him. "Don't."

"Sorry," Jacob says, quickly. "But I mean it."

He pulls her back into his arms, and, after a moment's resistance, she lets herself stay there.


End file.
